Google and IBM aren't the only tech firms eyeing artificial intelligence. Microsoft this week showed off its answer to AI: Project Adam.

"The goal of Project Adam is to enable software to visually recognize any object," Microsoft said in a blog post. "It's a tall order, given the immense neural network in human brains that makes those kinds of associations possible through trillions of connections."

The goal, of course, is to replicate the complex processes within the human brain on a computer, so that machines can understand and process requests just as a person might. To start, however, Microsoft Research tested Project Adam on an image database containing 14 million images, which included images of dogs. Adam was able to not only discern different types of dogs, but breeds as well - like the difference between a Pembroke and Cardigan corgi.

At the faculty summit, a Microsoft researcher pointed a Windows Phone at a dog and asked Cortana to identify the breed. She correctly responded that it was a Rhodesian Ridgeback.

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The Adam-powered Cortana also correctly identified a Cobberdog and a Dalmatian, and responded "this is not a dog" when the phone was pointed at Harry Shum, executive vice president of Technology and Research.

"Using 30 times fewer machines than other systems, that data was used to train a neural network made up of more than two billion connections," Microsoft said. "This scalable infrastructure is twice more accurate in its object recognition and 50 times faster than other systems."

Project Adam is still in its early stages; work began just 18 months ago. But Microsoft envisions a time when Project Adam could be used to determine the nutritional value of a meal by pointing your phone at the food. "Or, snap a photo of an unusual skin condition and get an accurate diagnosis. Or if you're out in the woods and need to know which plants are poisonous and which are edible, this is the technology that could help you do that," Microsoft said.

According to Wired, Project Adam is based on technology developed at the University of Wisconsin, dubbed Hogwild.

Rexly Peñaflorida II is the newest intern at PCMag and will attempt to consume as much tech knowledge as he can in addition to playing video games and watching lots of The West Wing on Netflix. He studies convergence journalism at the University of Missouri. Follow him on Twitter @Heirdeux.
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